Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Night 8 of "The 14 Nights of Valentine's Day"

Welcome to night 8 of "The 14 Nights of Valentine's Day Giveaway". Tonight we have our next featured shop from our Valentine Giveaway. We also have the review of the next movie on our Valentine Love Story Movie List. Take a look at the list and find some fun movies to watch this Valentine season. You'll even get the chance for 10 extra entries. First off lets get to our featured item of the night from Laughing Vixen Lounge.

Tonight's Featured Item - Vintage Kiss - Style B Silver Pendant

Vintage Kiss - Style B Silver Pendant $12

Purchase this, or any other featured item, from Laughing Vixen Lounge through February 29th and get 10% off. Use code FEBRUARY10 at checkout.

The 14 Nights of Valentine's Day Shop Feature -Little Fairy Cult

Little Fairy Cult is run by Sand from Cleethorpes, UK . Her shop is filled with fun jewelry and accessories.

Sand has been making these adorable Chibi Keychains. I love the classic monsters one. You'll also find one's of Shaun of the Dead, Star Wars and Zombies.

Sand also makes lots of metal jewelry in many themes. You'll see Zombies and Alice in Wonderland rooming around her shop. And if you're a Supernatural fan you'll love her necklaces like this Devils Trap below.

You'll have a chance to win 2 Valentine Heart necklaces from Sand's shop. Enter now on the main giveaway page.﻿

To get in the Valentine spirit each shop was asked what their favorite love story movie is. Sand said "My favourite Romantic movie . . . ummmmmm, I love Legend, it is my favourite film and kind of romantic."

Now for tonight's movie. Make sure to leave a comment below. Anyone who leaves a comment, with their opinion of the movie, for each of the 14 movies will get an extra 10 entries in our Valentine's Day Giveaway. After you finish commenting on all 14 movies you need only leave 1 comment on the main giveaway page that says "I made it through the 14 Nights of Valentine's Day Movie Marathon with my heart intact!" That 1 comment will count for 10 entries.

Night 8 - Brokeback Mountain

Tagline - Love Is A Force Of Nature

Music selections from the movie on the jukebox -

1. He Was A Friend Of Mine - Willie Nelson

Directed by Ang Lee (Sense and Sensibility and Taking Woodstock) and released on December 16, 2005 by Focus Features (rated R). In the summer of '63 a ranch hand, Ennis (Heath Ledger) and a bull rider, Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) meet and fall in love. They spend the next few decades trying to hide their love from those around them trying to be content with the little happiness that life allows them.

While this is far from a traditional love story, it is beautiful, moving and completely heartbreaking. I know this my not be every one's cup of tea but if you're open minded give this one a try. It's wonderful story telling, lovely scenery and a very touching and emotional love story. Get out the Kleenex box!

Heath Ledger shined when he graced the silver screen. The world is a little less bright without him here.

Take a look at the original trailer...

Some trivia about the movie...

1. According to an interview that Heath Ledger gave to the Philadelphia Inquirer's Steven Rea, there was a sequence that was filmed for the movie in which Jack and Ennis help some hippies get their car out of a river. According to Ledger, the scene took three days to shoot and was disliked almost immediately by everyone involved. The scene was written by James Schamus as an attempt to show Jack and Ennis in a heroic situation, but it does not appear in Annie Proulx's original short story, the published screenplay, or the final cut of the movie.
2. Gus Van Sant and Joel Schumacher were interested in directing the project.
3. Ang Lee struggled continually with the sheep during the shoot. Apparently sheep don't drink from running water, only ponds and dams. Ang tried all day to get the sheep to drink from a stream, but they wouldn't oblige. He had to give up on the shot. Also, American sheep carry a bacteria/virus that Canadian sheep don't possess. The film's scene where two herds of sheep become mixed up had some nightmarish real-life parallels, as the Canadian government had expressly warned them of dire consequences if they caused any disease to spread to the local animals from the south-of-the-border variety.
4. During its first weekend of release (playing in only five US theaters), this set a record for the highest per-screen gross of any non-animated movie in history.
5. According to producer James Schamus, the movie cost so little to make that it recouped its cost during its first week of limited release.
6. Over 90% of the footage was shot within 70 feet of a road.
7. The song Jack plays on his harmonica is "He Was a Friend of Mine", the same song Willie Nelson sings during the closing credits.
8. According to an interview in Premiere Magazine, Mark Wahlberg stated that at one point, he and Joaquin Phoenix were considered for the two lead roles. Although Wahlberg considered it due to his brother-like relationship with Phoenix, the script was ultimately too sexually graphic for him.
9. Among the actors considered for the male leads were Josh Hartnett, Colin Farrell, Matt Damon, Billy Crudup, and Ben Affleck.
11. The shirts worn by the 2 actors that feature prominently in the film were sold on eBay in February 2006 for $101,100. The buyer, film historian and collector Tom Gregory, called them "the ruby slippers of our time". In 2009, Gregory lent the shirts to The Autry National Center of the American West, a Los Angeles museum that seeks "to explore the experiences and perceptions of the diverse peoples of the American West." Their exhibition of the shirts is part of their larger attempt to examine representations of the Western LGBT experience in history and fiction.
12. The poster for the film was deliberately styled to resemble another romantic epic, James Cameron's Titanic
13. When asked if he had any fears about playing a gay man, Heath Ledger replied that he was not afraid of the role, only that he wasn't mature enough to do it justice.
14. In March 2006 Randy Quaid filed a lawsuit against Focus Features alleging that the company had misled him into thinking that Brokeback Mountain was a low budget, art-house film with no prospect of making money. He saw this as a ruse to get him to lower his salary. At the time of the lawsuit, the film had earned more than $160 million. Quaid dropped the lawsuit in May, seemingly after Focus agreed to pay him a bonus. Focus, however, denied that any such payment ever took place, and Focus spokeswoman Adriene Bowles was quoted as saying, "the circumstances of him dropping the suit are as mysterious as the circumstances under which he filed his claim."
15. Heath Ledger declined to go to the one month cowboy camp that had been organized as he had grown up on farms in Western Australia. Jake Gyllenhaal was required to attend, however, as he needed "roughing up".
16. When Ennis finds Jack's and his shirts hanging together in Jack's childhood closet, Jack has arranged them so that Jack's blue shirt is visible first and Ennis' light plaid shirt is tucked inside it. In the final scene in the film, after Ennis has taken both shirts home to hang them in his own closet, they are reversed, so that Jack's shirt is inside Ennis'. According to co-screenwriter Diana Ossana, switching the order of the shirts was Heath Ledger's idea.